"What are you scolding?" Kang Shaojie turned around and looked at the grandparents and grandchildren curiously.
"Scold Jiao Xiao'e. She had an argument with my grandfather this morning and even threw a lot of dirty water into my yard." Lin Dan narrated calmly.
"Oh, is that so? Just scold me." Kang Shaojie turned around and continued to mix the cement. Cao Muchen and Shen Jiayi just chuckled twice and didn't think there was anything excessive in doing so. Liuxing Village is not a big place. If you go out for a walk and talk to some people, what can't you find out? The moment they learned the truth about the feces-throwing incident, the three men's impression of Jiao Xiao'e could only be described as extremely terrible, otherwise they would not have treated her like that in front of the camera. As a result, they couldn't like the two children of the Zhou family, even though Zhou Cuicui was very well-behaved in front of them.
Lin Shuanzhu looked at the Zhou family's gate hesitantly.
Lin Dan held the wheelchair handle and said, "Master, if you don't scold me, I will push you back."
"No, no, no, I'm going to curse! I have to breathe a sigh of relief today." Lin Shuanzhu took a deep breath, then yelled at the top of his lungs: "Jiao Xiao'e, you have no conscience. You even cheated the five-guarantee households out of their money!"
Lin Dan waited quietly for what to say next, but Lin Shuanzhui only cursed him with this one sentence and nothing else. In his poor life, he had never had the experience of quarreling with others. He endured any difficulties he encountered, as his vocabulary was really limited.
Lin Dan sighed and was about to push Lin Shuanzhu back, but he heard him yelling again: "Jiao Xiao'e, you have no conscience! Jiao Xiao'e, you have no conscience! Jiao Xiao'e, you have no conscience!"
"Pfft!" Kang Shaojie couldn't help but burst out laughing. Is this an insult or a parody?
Cao Muchen and Shen Jiayi quickly turned their backs, shrugging their shoulders, obviously trying to hold back their laughter. The old man is indeed confused, but he also has a cute side.
Lin Dan was relieved. She went home, fetched some boiling water, and stood beside Lin Shuanzhu waiting. Sure enough, after Lin Shuanzhui cursed her dozens of times, Jiao Xiao'e ran out with a bucket of dirty water. Seeing Lin Dan, who was also carrying water with white smoke coming out of the bucket, she immediately ran back in a panic. She didn't dare to say a word in return, for fear that Lin Shuanzhu would expose her past. She feels embarrassed that she is so old and still hooking up with an old man. But what can we do? Someone has to help her with the housework! If the people from the TV station were not there, she would have asked her brothers to smash the Lin family to pieces!
Zhou Cuicui hid behind the door, occasionally sticking her head out to glance at Lin Dan, her eyes full of shame and anger.
Lin Dan knew that Jiao Xiao'e was a coward who only bullied the weak and feared the strong, so she just let Lin Shuanzhu scold her while she went home with the boiled water.
To the accompaniment of "Jiao Xiao'e, you have no conscience", Kang Shaojie, Cao Muchen and Shen Jiayi started to build the slide in an orderly manner. Lin Dan scraped the cured pork leg weighing dozens of pounds clean. The kitchen was too small to maneuver, so she chopped the meat in the yard, with a winnowing basket specially used to hold the meat beside her.
The pork leg was very hard, and even professional butchers had a hard time chopping it. However, she just cut it like chopping melons and vegetables, and it was done in just a few clicks. The photographer who was following Zhou Cuicui had already betrayed her and just focused on filming Lin Dan, and this move was tacitly approved by the director and producer. They failed to film the making process of the bacon hotpot yesterday, and missed the sour soup cat ears in the morning. This time they couldn’t miss filming the bacon pork legs. Compared with the girl who is both talented in literature and martial arts, smart, capable and upright, Zhou Cuicui, who can lick her own braids off while making a fire, is simply unattractive.
After chopping the pig's feet, Lin Dan washed the dried radish slices and placed them in the vegetable basket for later use. Then he took out a stove and a large pot from the kitchen and placed them under the eaves. There are only two stoves in the kitchen, one for frying and the other for cooking. The cured pork feet need to be stewed for more than two hours to make them tasty, which takes up one stove. It is very inconvenient. It would be better to use another small stove for slow cooking.
After lighting the honeycomb coal, Lin Dan poured the cured pork feet and the milk soup prepared in the morning into the pot, brought it to a boil over high heat, then simmered it over low heat, adding one or more seasonings every once in a while to slowly blend the flavors.
The aroma of the cured pork feet became stronger and stronger, and after adding the dried radish slices, a little bit of sweetness seeped out. Even if the lid of the pot was closed tightly, it could not stop the aroma from spreading. The three young men had no intention of working and just kept glancing at the pot placed under the eaves.
Occasionally, villagers would pass by and would always stop and ask loudly what you eat at home. The children in the village quickly gathered together, lying on the big iron gate of the Lin family, watching eagerly, licking their lips as they watched. If the yard had not been full of strangers, they would have run in to beg for food.
Several photographers took turns taking pictures of the pot with milky white soup and rich aroma, and then they all pointed their cameras at the little girl who was sitting by the sink washing vegetables.
It takes two hours to stew the cured pork trotters, but Lin Dan was not in a hurry. He slowly washed the rice, washed the vegetables, and cut them. An hour and a half later, she threw a few cloves of garlic into the pot to add the final flavor to the cured pork trotters, and then started to stir-fry the side dishes.
The steps and threshold were filled up. After washing their hands, the three boys ran into the kitchen to help. Some added firewood, some washed the pots. They were hundreds of times more diligent than when they were at Zhou's house.
Kang Shaojie sat at the stove, staring at the blazing firewood and asked, "Dan, why are you so good at cooking?"
"I could cook when I was four years old." Lin Dan cut the water spinach stems into thin pieces.
"Impossible!" Shen Jiayi, who was sitting next to him, immediately questioned: "How can a four-year-old child cook? Can you reach the stove? Won't you cut your hand if you use a knife?"
"If you can't reach it, just put a stool under you. My grandfather was working outside and my grandmother never cared about me. If I didn't learn to cook, would I just wait to starve to death? If I got burned by fire, I would feel pain, so I learned to add firewood; if I got cut by a knife, I would bleed, so I learned to cut vegetables. After enough lessons, I will naturally understand how to cook while protecting myself. City children can't learn it not because they are stupid, but because they don't need to. They are born to enjoy life, not to suffer. But in rural areas, it is very common for children aged three or four to do housework and take care of younger brothers and sisters. Others say that we rural people grow up in a barbaric way, and this is true. We can't even afford to eat at home, so what difference does it make if we have one more child or one less? The child with a stronger luck will naturally survive." Lin Dan narrated calmly while cutting vegetables.
Kang Shaojie and the other two fell into a strange silence. They really couldn't imagine what Lin Dan's childhood was like. Compared to her, how lucky they are!
Lin Dan was just describing the current situation of Liuxing Village without revealing any sadness. She poured oil into the pan and began to stir-fry the water spinach stems with fermented black beans, then sprinkled in some minced garlic for flavor. The second dish is garlic-stir-fried water spinach leaves, which also need to be stir-fried. Just dip the green leaves in the fragrant garlic oil. The original flavor is extremely fresh and tender. The third dish, braised winter melon, took quite some effort. First, sprinkle a spoonful of sugar in the hot oil and stir-fry it into bright red juice. Then add the winter melon slices and dry-fry them. Finally, add light soy sauce, soy sauce, garlic, and chili shreds to enhance the flavor. Turn to low heat and simmer for a while. When it’s out of the pot, the rich sauce flavor is comparable to braised pork, making you drool.
The fourth dish, soy milk, was the most peculiar. It was a kind of ingredient that the three teenagers had never seen before. It looked like tofu dregs. It was a soft and mushy lump scooped out of the jar, but its color was bright red and a bit smelly. The three were about to protest that this ingredient was too destructive to their worldviews, but Lin Dan had already thrown the wrung-out soy milk into the hot oil and stir-fried it. The more it was stir-fried, the more unique the taste became, similar to stinky tofu. Then he added the milky white noodle soup and stir-fried it into a thick porridge-like substance. He then poured in the finely chopped leeks and continued to stir-fry. After only a short while, the aroma of the leeks completely blended with the stinky, sour and fragrant taste of the soy milk, making people drool and their appetites whet.
If I had to use one word to describe this dish, it would be amazing! The ingredients are amazing, the aroma is amazing, and it tastes even more amazing!
The fat boy Shen Jiayi scooped a spoonful of soy milk and took a sip. He was immediately amazed: "It's delicious! Sour, spicy, salty and fragrant, especially good with rice!"
"This is used to mix with rice. It's made from fermented tofu dregs. It's a bit like stinky tofu. It smells bad but tastes good. It's a specialty here." Lin Dan took off her apron and headscarf and announced, "Okay, it's time to eat!"
"Great, it's time to eat!" Without the director raising a sign to signal, the three young masters had already spontaneously set up the table and set up the dishes and chopsticks, and pushed Lin Shuanzhu, who was sitting at the door, in.
Lin Dan scooped a pot of cured pork trotters stewed with dried radish slices into three ceramic basins, placed one basin on her own dining table, gave one basin to the director, and took the last basin outside while it was still hot.
Seeing that she was about to leave, Kang Shaojie hurriedly shouted, "It's time for dinner, where are you going?"
"I'll deliver it to Uncle Liao's house and exchange some things for it." Lin Dan waved his hand and left. Ten minutes later, he came back with a sack.
Cao Muchen stretched his neck to take a look, and immediately understood: "Are you going to teach yourself high school knowledge? You know everything about the third year of junior high school?"
"Yes, I know all of them in the third year of junior high school. Instead of sitting stupidly in the classroom every day, I might as well get some high school textbooks to read." Uncle Liao was a vegetable vendor with a good financial situation. Several children in his family had graduated from high school. Lin Dan traded these textbooks with him in exchange for a pot of cured pork trotters. Although she has a wealth of knowledge in her mind, it is still necessary to familiarize herself with the tutorials in advance if she wants to get into a good university.
"No wonder you often skip classes. Wouldn't it be boring if you understood everything?" Cao Muchen took the initiative to find a perfect explanation for the original owner's lack of progress.
Lin Dan smiled and said nothing. Just as he was about to pick up his chopsticks to eat, he heard the little fat man exclaim in exaggeration: "Oh my God! This dish is so delicious! The fat of the cured pig's feet is stewed until it is soft and melts in your mouth, but the lean meat still has a little chewiness, which is very palatable. The skin is crispy and elastic, and the more you eat, the more delicious it is. The dried radish slices have greatly retained the sweetness and freshness, and combined with the smoked fragrance of the cured pig's feet, it is so beautiful that I am almost ascending to heaven! The stems of the water spinach with black beans are so crispy and fragrant, and the water spinach leaves with garlic are so tender. The braised winter melon is even more delicious than the braised pork, and the more you eat the squeezed soy milk, the more addictive it is. I can finish a pot of rice with it! Dan, why don't you come back earlier? Do you know what kind of life I have lived in the Zhou family? My fat body is finally saved, and my grandparents will be very pleased. Dan, I will help you with work every day in the future, and you will take care of my meals, right?"
Kang Shaojie quickly swallowed the meat in his mouth, raised his hand and said: "I will be your family's long-term worker in the future, and there will be work to do. Just stand at the door and shout!" He has a very picky taste, so how could he not taste how superb Hei Yatou's cooking skills are? It is no exaggeration to say that if Hei Yatou opened a private restaurant, the business would be booming! After eating the dishes she cooked and then eating the pig food prepared by Jiao Xiao'e, he would rather come to the Lin family to work as a farmhand.
"I'll join in too." Cao Muchen had a strong taste and he loved Lin Dan's cooking skills.
Several photographers were drooling while taking pictures, and then sighed silently in their hearts: the rich landlord turned into a farmhand in seconds, the girl's ability to transform people is too strong, isn't it?
However, behind them, the members of the director crew had already started fighting for the pot of cured pork trotters.
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